Inside I was barefoot. Spotless once.

The landscape made me animal.

Prairie sward, woodland scramble

snagging at my shearling. Before I

wedged on hooves, laced leather laces.

Instrument made canter compositional.

Gnossienne faltering toward the mirror

to pluck arch. Considered the brute

force of thought, and mind made it so.

In light, Zola’s loose fur on the floorboards

made the spirits of pine needles underfoot.

Animal made earth machine—

horizonal static of forty thousand

plumages in passage. So made art. I

uttered what I heard uttered, and language

made me. I thought, Anima, and after

showers, bowed before the space heater

to shake my sable hair. Skin singed—

a thin gold cross wound hot around

my trunk of throat. Branded gold. Like

God, animal made animal animal.